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Tennis Lesson
GUIDE TO A TENNIS LEARNING ADVENTURE:
Instructor:Bob Ray 1436 University Ave, San Diego,Ca 92103
619 295 0325
Equipment recommended: Tennis racket, tennis shoes, hat, water and sun screen.
To avoid injury we will start and end each session with various Yoga stretches(See EXCERCISES LINK at the end of his web page)
PHILOSOPHY:
Philosophy of teaching tennis: Human Beings are the result of millions of years of evolution. Like other animals we have basic survival instincts that take over from our conscious mind in an emergency. Programing these instincts to help improve our tennis is one of the main difficulties in learning the game. When something attacks an animal, there are 3 possible reactions that occure. They are fight, flight or freeze. Depending on the personality of the animal being attacked and what kind of animal is attacking, one of those 3 fear reactions will occure.
If a students instinctive reaction to an attacking tennis ball is to hesitate ( freeze) or backup (flight), the result will be a poorly executed stroke. To overcome the instincts to freeze or flee a student needs to play act mechnically to lead to a confident tennis player and ultimately a confident personality.
To play act one needs to know how the stroke is suppose to look and feel. Then by imagining that the student is on a small stage where their motion, and not the ball path, is all that the audience sees, it becomes easier to develope the proper technique. If the student adds the burden of having to make the shot as well as look good doing it, they will probably neither look good nor make the shot.
THE PROGRESSIONS:
CONSISTENCY:
We will start by learning to be consistent. Our object will be to get the ball over the net and inside the the lines.
PLACEMENT:
After consistency we concentrate on ball placement. The closer to the lines the better. But aiming too close can cause a loss of consistency. So a balance must be struct between consistency and placement.
SPIN:
Underspin will travel slower thru the air and bounce lower than topspin. We will learn topspin first then underspin.
TACTICS:
Using a combination of consistency, placement,change of pace and spin to place our opponents off balance and on the defense is the ultimate goal in tennis competition.
PACE:
Pace or power will not be our objective. It will come as a result of good technique and growing older. By striving for power we will most likely destroy our rythem, cause injury and ultimately end up with less power.
TECHNIQUE:
Improving your tennis techniques can be an interesting adventure. More fun and spiritually rewarding than just trying to beat your opponents. And ultimately in the long run making it easier to beat your opponents.
To improve your technique you need to understand what good technique is and what you are doing relative to it. That is why you should practice shadow swings and practice on the backboard.
Knowledge without regular practice will be wasted.
SHADOW PRACTICE:
In learning proper technique you need to become aware of certain mechanical requirements. Taking practice swings without the ball will help groove these mechanics. You can strive for good technique by watching shadow swings in a mirror or just strive for the right feel without the mirror. However, once confronted with the ball, your focus should be on creating ball flight, shape and direction. Your pre-programed subconscience will take care of the bio- mechanics needed to produce the shot pictured in your mind.
THE BACKBOARD is a great means of teaching yourself tennis for 5 major reasons:
1.The ball comes back quicker, forcing you to prepare earlier.
2.You learn to swing confidently, because the fear of the ball going long from hitting too hard is eliminated.
3.Costs less than a full court with a ball throwing machine or instructor.
4.An opponent is not required. So you can practice any time you can get to the board.
5.You don't have lots of balls to pick up.
A fun way to practice your techniques on the board, is to have an ever increasing goal. Start by hitting 5 forehands and 5 backhands in a row without a miss against a backboard. Then every day thereafter increase the requirement by 1.
TECHNIQUE:
Good technique on the forehand, volley, overhead and serve falls within a generally accepted narrow range. However, the backhand has 3 different standards:one handed underspin, one handed topspin and two handed topspin.
UNIVERSAL TRUTHS:
SPLIT STEP: Newton's 3rd Law states that stationary objects remain stationary until a force acts upon them. In tennis terms that means that in order to get a head start you should be moving when your opponent hits the ball. However, if you are moving in the wrong direction at that moment it would take longer to get moving in the right direction than if you were standing still. To overcome this dicotomy you should be moving but not in a direction. To do this you should face the net and bounce at the exact moment the opponent hits the ball.
WATCHING THE BALL: Learning to track the ball from your opponents racket to your own is not as easy as it seems. Particularly when the ball is traveling over 100 MPH and you are on the run. Start training your eye by trying to read the writing on the ball as it approaches. Watching the ball from bounce to your racket is particularly critical.
BEND:
Regardless of what stroke you are learning, the bent to straight motion is universal. Just like a snake coils when it is about to strike, every athlete bends his knees, elbow, wrist etc. before hitting, kicking, jumping, running or throwing. Ergo bending at the knees elbow and wrist before hitting a tennis ball is essential to good basic strokes.
PREPARATION: The 5 Ps, Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance, is true in life and especially in tennis. The sooner you can get in good position to hit the ball the better. Good position refers to your body and your racket. On ground strokes having your racket and body in position to hit the ball by the time the ball bounces is a good reference to determine if you are getting ready early enough. So, if you are naturally slow, lethargic and lazy, you will do better taking up golf or bowling. Good tennis demands quickness.
RELAXATION: A tense muscle does not perform nearly as well as a relaxed one. This is the the greatest dicotomy in playing tennis. How to be relaxed physically, while moving quickly, remaining focused mentally and not being sloppy in controling the racket. But don't worry, relaxed muscles will naturally learn on their own when to contract. Being tense will only interfere with your muscles working naturally.
COMMITMENT: Few sports are as demanding of one's time as tennis. It requires regular practice to just maintain your ability level(2 hours, 3 times per week is maintenance). To improve requires constant practice. Assume 2 hours per day, 6 days per week, year round to guarantee improvement to your ultimate natural potential. Professional circuit players probably average about 6 hours per day of practice. The amount of time devoted to practice can be significantly reduced, if you spend your time when first introduced to tennis perfecting good form. In other words, good form from the beginning can save alot of time and allow you ultimately be a better player.
BREATHING:If you watch most top level matches today you can hear the players grunt or yell with every hit. Breathing out is a releasing action. Whereas inhaling is an inhibiting action. Just as in Karate the exclamation adds force to the action. Get in the habit now of making some noise verbally when you hit.
WEIGHT TRANSFER:
On all basic strokes your weight should be moving toward the contact point of the ball. And that contact point should be at a 45% angle from the target. By doing so you will taking most ground strokes on the the rise before the ball bounce peaks and starts to fall.
GRIPS: When the game was predomanently played on grass, the continental forehand grip was the prefered grip to handle the low bounce of grass. Great continental forehands such as Fred Perry's and Rod Laver's were the standard of their time. Now that hard and clay courts dominate, their higher bounce has led to the adoption of full eastern and western style grips on the forehand. These grips are designed to produce the exagerated topspin necessary to handle and produce powerful high bounding shots. We will be learning 4 grips. The placement of the index finger first knuckle will determine the grip.
#1-Eastern Backhand topspin. Knuckle on top of the grip.
#2-Continental for Serve, backhand underspin,overhead and volleys. Knuckle on 1st bevel from the top.
#3-Eastern forehand-Knuckle on 2nd bevel from the top.
#4-Western forehand-Knuckle on 3rd bevel from the top.
FOREHAND:is usually the easiest for a beginner because of similar motions in other sports ie ping pong,bowling,softball pitching,golf etc.
But, because the forehand in tennis is slightly different from these other sports, in the long run it can be a liability to think you don't have to refine your forehand technique.
FOREHAND GRIP:To find the forehand grip: stand facing and 1 foot from a wall; place the racket string bed flush against the wall at chest height. Grab the racket handle with the racket parallel to the ground in the most natural manner in this position. Taking the ball at chest height is most desired with this grip. For dealing with balls lower than the knees you may find that the continental grip is prefered. That grip can be determined by going back to the wall, lowering the racket to knee height and grabbing the it naturally in that position.
FOREHAND PREPARATION:As soon as you realize the ball is coming to your forehand side, similtaneously turn your body sideways to net and draw the racket head back with the hitting side of the racket facing the bottom of the back fence with your elbow bent . This position should be achieved at least before the ball bounces. Take the racket back by turning your shoulders with the racket face down at a 45% angle, wrist laid back and the elbow bent.The loop backswing will be easier for developing rythem. But straight back has advantages later on. Players raised on clay courts tend to have longer backswings than those raised on fast courts. For that reason clay court specialists rarely do well on fast courts. On the other hand fast court specialists do far better on slow courts than slow court specialists do on fast courts. Andre Agassi is an example of player raised on fast courts, who can win on any surface because of his compact backswing.
FOOTWORK: At the same time as you are preparing your racket you should be moving your feet in quick short steps to position the incoming ball into a comfortable strike zone. Since the grip was established to be comfortable at chest height, the ideal strike zone should be chest high. If the ball is lower than chest high, you should maintain the chest high strike zone by bending your knees.
FOREHAND SWING:The sequence of events after the ball bounces is to step toward the ball with your non-dominant foot, start your arm swinging foreward, then rotate your upper body, brush the ball with your wrist from low to high then followthru over your opposite shoulder. Great examples are Serena Williams,Leyton Hewitt, Pete Sampras, Maria Sharipova.
BACKHAND:
2-HANDED seems to be the more popular method of hitting the backhand currently. Players, who are ambidextrous and or of slight build tend to do better with two hands. The two handed backhand is basically a forehand with two hands on the racket. The non-dominant hand(left hand for right handers) does most of the hitting. Best examples of this shot are Andre Agassi and either Williams sister..
GRIP:Therefore the grip in the non-dominent hand is arrived at by grabbing the racket at chest height, as you did for the Forehand.
1-HANDED UNDERSPIN backhand is a stroke every player should posess whether their attacking backhand is 2-handed or 1 handed topspin. It is primarily used by tournament players for low balls and defense. It is most effective on grass courts.
GRIP:To find the grip stand sideways and one foot away to the wall, place the racket against the wall at knee height and grab the racket in a natural arm position.
The first section of your index finger will be flush with the wall. The motion is similar to a baseball umpire showing safe.
1-HANDED TOPSPIN:is the most difficult stroke for a beginner because there is no motion similar in life or sports. But when perfected it is a thing of beauty and extremely effective. The greatest difficulty is that it requires even earlier preparation than a forehand. That is because it must be hit even further in front of the body than a forehand. To establish how far in front to make contact and establish the grip, stand sideways and about one foot away from the wall and grab the racket that is chest high and about 1 1/2 feet foreward of your front foot. Great examples of this motion ar Roger Federer and Justine Henen.
BACKHAND BACKSWING: Grab the throat of the racket with your non-dominant hand and pull the racket back so that the face of the racket is facing the wall behind you and you are looking over your dominant shoulder at the approaching ball. Both elbows are bent and both arms are close to your body.
BACKHAND FOREWARD SWING: starts by relaxing(droping) both arms when the ball bounces. Allow the momentum of the drop to carry the racket arm to meet the ball at the strike zone.
BACKHAND FOLLOWTHRU: The Followthru is complete when both arms are fully extended on opposite sides of the body(like you are flying). The racket arm will be generally in line with the flight of the ball.
SERVE:is the most important stroke in the game. 50% of all points are decided on the serve. In top level tennis who ever is serving usually wins that game. It can be easier for the beginner in learning the serve as the ball and you are almost stationary. So this is the only stroke that doesn't require quickness. In fact the less rushed the wind up the better.
START:Stand sideways to the net with your racket craddled on edge at the throat in your ball toss hand. Your dominant hand holds the handle loosely. Your feet should be about shoulders width apart.
GRIP: AS the racket is on edge the resulting grip will be about the same as for the backhand underspin.
MOTION: The serve consists of 3 beats:
1.Drop. 2. Lift 3.Hit.
The motion starts by dropping both arms to your side. The straight toss arm, then lifts the ball up the base line(this requires turning your shoulder up the baseline). The racket arm bends at the elbow so that the racket head becomes a halo behind your head. The ball should be tossed up like feeding a banana to a Giraffe ,whose mouth is 1 foot in front of the base line an
Excercises
Send E-Mail to: rayco@tennisrays.com
Copyright © 2005 Bob Ray. All Rights Reserved